As a figure in the intellectual life of the time, Renan is difficult to estimate. The very subtilty of his intellect betrayed him into an oscillation which was far from admirable, and prevented his countrymen in his own day from “getting to grips” with his ideas. These were kaleidoscopic. Renan seems a type, reflecting many tendencies of the time, useful as an illustration to the historian of the ideas of the period; but for philosophy in the special sense he has none of the clearly defined importance of men like Renouvier, Lachelier, Guyau, Fouillée, Bergson or Blondel. His humanism keeps him free from dogmatism, but his mind fluctuates so that his general attitude to the ultimate problems is one of reserve, of scepticism and of frequent paradox and contradiction. Renan seems to combine the positivist scorn of metaphysics with the Kantian idealism. At times, however, his attitude is rather Hegelian, and he believes in universal change which is an evolving of spirit, the ideal or God, call it what we will. We need not be too particular about names or forms of thought, for, after all, everything “may be only a dream.” That is Renan’s attitude, to temper enthusiasm by irony, to assert a duty of doubt, and often, perhaps, to gain a literary brilliance by contradictory statements. “The survey of human affairs is not complete,” he reminds us, “unless we allot a place for irony beside that of tears, a place for pity beside that of rage, and a place for a smile alongside respect.”[12] [12] Preface to his _Drames philosophiques_, 1888. It was this versatility which made Renan a lover of the philosophic dialogue. This literary and dramatic form naturally appealed strongly to a mind who was so very conscious of the fact that the truths with which philosophy deals cannot be directly denied or directly affirmed, as they are not subject to demonstration. All the high problems of humanity Renan recognised as being of this kind, as involving finally a rational faith; and he claimed that the best we can do is to present the problems of life from different points of view. This is due entirely to the peculiar character of philosophy itself, and to the distinction, which must never be overlooked, between knowledge and belief, between certitude and opinion. Geometry, for example, is not a subject for dialogues but for demonstration, as it involves knowledge and certitude. The problems of philosophy, on the contrary, involve “_une nuance de foi_,” as Renan styles it. They involve willed adhesion, acceptance or choice; they provoke sympathy or hate, and call into play human personality with its varying shades of colour.